Maintenance Plans - Best Practise

  • Hi,

    I just wanted others views on the scenario below, lets assume we have a SQL 2K5 box, running a number of user databases.

    The following tasks have to be completed;

    Backup the system databases (once a week)

    Optimize and full backup of the user databases (once a week)

    Differential backup of the user databases (every evening expect when the full back runs)

    The question is, is there a best practise method to approaching this?

    i.e Do I have 1 maintenance plan with a number of sub plans or is it better for me to set them out to be 3 separate plans, 1 for system, 1 for user (full) and 1 for user (diff) and then use the sub plans to separate out out functions. I.e in the optimise and full backup plan, I could have 2 sub plans, one dealing with the optimization and then one for the backup.

    Any comments?

  • I personally find Maintenance Plans fine on small shops running small databases.

    For a large environment I personally prefer to have full control so I usually write my own procs and schedule them as needed.

    In regards to your backup/recovery strategy, it has to be aligned with your Business requirements so I really can't tell if it is good or not.

    _____________________________________
    Pablo (Paul) Berzukov

    Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.

    Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.
  • I basically agree with Paul that I have typically created my own jobs for maintenance. More out of habit than anything being wrong with Maintenance plans. I would personally break out the maintenance plans based on System and User DB's. The only thing I see missing is log backups for the user databases. What if the problem occurs between differentials? Then up to a day's worth of data could be lost.

  • Hi guys,

    Thanks for the feedback.

    With regards to the transaction logs, my mistake, missed them off the post, it was only an example scenario.

    Thanks again for the feedback.

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